Our Place to Stand
by Lekythos
Summary: It's been years since aliens departed their lives and Liz, Maria, and Kyle have moved on and settled into their mostly drama-free lives. But the past has a tendency to come back around when we least expect it. They won't be able to escape what's coming, but maybe they don't want to.
1. Chapter 1

**Fair warning: I might never finish this story. I found it floating in the recesses of my computer and there's definitely a bunch of things I wanted to explore, but I'm not sure how well I'll pick up the threads after so long away from it. But, there's a chance that if people like it that might motivate me to get back into it so... I thought I'd post it anyway.**

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 _Her hands were chaffed from banging on the rock, her voice raw from yelling. They were right there, just out of her reach. She knew that if she could just get through this wall then everything would be okay. But the wall was solid. And her hands were useless, human hands._

 _Her voice broke, tears spilling from her eyes._

 _Beside her, Maria had stopped yelling. She was pressed, silently against the wall, hands and forehead. Her eyes were closed, her face screwed up in concentration, like if she just focussed enough then she could will herself through the wall. Or maybe that expression was just grief._

 _Kyle was running up and down the slope, trying the walls above and below them, circling around like he might find another way in._

 _"Max," Liz whispered one more time._

 _She stepped back from the solid rock that she knew was a doorway. There was nothing left to do. They'd figured it out, they were right there, but that wasn't enough._

 _She was helpless._

 _Kyle staggered to a stop beside her, his eyes met hers and she knew they were both on the same page. They'd failed. They were too late._

 _Maria sniffed loudly. She turned away from the wall, wiping her face with her sleeve._

 _The three stood there, unwilling to speak the words aloud, unwilling to leave, though they had no hope left between them._

 _The ground shook with a loud rumble and Liz grasped for Maria, who was closest to her._

 _Maria moved forward again, reaching for the door._

 _"Maria," Liz warned._

 _She glanced up at the cliff above them and saw stones dislodge above them as another tremor rattled through them._

 _"Maria!" Liz lunged forward, dragging her friend back from the unstable rock face._

 _"No, no, no," Maria was whispering repeatedly, struggling to get away from Liz. "We can't just let them go."_

 _Liz tried reasoning, tears and dust choking her voice, as she and Kyle dragged the other girl down the slope._

 _They were halfway down when a blast made them all stop and turn back to see a large part of the rock formation blown away and a strange metallic-like liquid pouring out of the cracks._

 _Maria stopped fighting them as the liquid kept pouring out, following them down the slope as they broke into a run._

 _They dashed behind an outcropping of rock that offered some shelter and turned back in time to see an indistinct shape shoot out of the cliff and disappear in a graceful parabolic curve._

Liz woke with a gasp.

She rolled to her side and pressed her hands to her eyes.

Again.

It had been months since she'd dreamed about that day. She'd almost started to hope that she'd moved on. Surely 6 years was enough time to move on.

She flopped back over to her back. At least it was the real one this time. Sometimes she dreamed that she got there in time, that they saved everyone. And then she would wake up and there would be a fraction of a second when she forgot the truth, before it all came rushing back more painfully than ever.

Liz glanced over at the clock. Half an hour until her alarm was meant to go off. No point in trying to go back to sleep now. She'd figured out a long time ago that the best way to deal with this recurring dream was to push it to the back of her mind; to find something that would distract her. She'd spent so long mourning Max and missing him and hating him. But she still had to get out of bed every morning. Still had to eat breakfast and go to classes and talk to people. It was just easier to pretend that she had moved on like everyone else had. Sometimes she could even convince herself.

At least she wouldn't have any problem finding a distraction today, she smiled to herself. Today Maria was arriving.

Liz teetered on her tip toes trying to see over the heads of the crowd of people at the airport terminal. The screen said that the flight from New York had landed 10 minutes ago. Liz elbowed her way around a few people until she could see the doors more clearly. A second later, her best friend appeared through the doors.

Liz yelled her name and ran towards her. They were both laughing as their arms twined around each other. But as soon as her hands touched her friend, Liz froze.

"Could you be any louder?" Maria laughed as she pulled back from the hug. But when she saw the look on Liz's face her heart started racing, "What is it?"

"I...it's…" Liz stuttered and fell silent.

"Oh god, am I gonna die?" Panic laced Maria's voice.

Liz shook her head still unable to say it out loud.

"Tell me!" Maria grabbed Liz's shoulders and practically shook her. "It's my future, just tell me how bad it is."

Liz looked at her best friend, wishing she could erase what she'd seen. Maria was so happy now. She'd found her place in the world and she loved every minute of it. But when Liz saw something… She couldn't protect Maria from this by hiding it from her. The best she could do was prepare her. Liz took a deep breath.

"I saw Michael."

The visions had started almost a year after the aliens had flown away.

It was disconcerting, but by that point she'd suffered through much more painful and terrifying manifestations of power. She'd spent a week covered in painful green lightening that had her skipping school and coming up with progressively unconvincing lies to tell her parents to avoid them seeing. She'd wondered if it would kill her, if the legacy Max would leave behind was going to be a trail of people he tried to save, dying of mysterious unexplained illnesses years after he'd healed them.

She'd wished for him then. Certain that he would have known what to do, how to fix it. But he didn't come back no matter how many thoughts she sent his way. And she got better anyway. There were a few mishaps here and there as she figured out how to control the sporadic explosions of energy, but she'd found her way on her own. She didn't need a hero to save her.

The visions were a different kind of problem. It had taken only 2 premonitions to convince her that what she was seeing was real, but a lot more to convince the others. Over the years she'd seen a lot of different things. It turned out that the most difficult part was hiding her reactions to the visions. It was so tempting to jump or shout or give cryptic warnings to strangers. But that only ended in people staring at her and, in one memorable case, calling an ambulance.

She'd had 5 years to master keeping a straight face when she saw people crying or dying or worse. She'd learnt that it was often quite easy to change the futures that she saw without raising anyone's suspicions. When she saw someone getting hit by a car crossing the road all it really took was delaying them somehow. Asking them for the time or directions to somewhere. Then just reach out and touch them again and if she focussed _just_ right then she could trigger another flash and see whether they would make it through the day alive.

More often than not the flashes were of something dramatic. Kyle had theories about that but they didn't really know how it worked so they couldn't say for sure. When she was searching for a vision she could see benign things, but when she had all of her mental defences up and something got through anyway it was usually pretty big. The bigger the event the further ahead she could see it, but the details got pretty vague if it was more than a couple of days into the future. The furthest ahead she'd seen was 3 weeks and all she'd gotten was the impression of horrible pain and loud noises. She'd had to basically stalk the girl until she could get a clearer flash to work with.

But these days Liz mostly avoided contact with people at all if she could help it. If she saw the future then she felt responsible for changing it, but what she didn't know she couldn't change. It was easier that way. Sometimes she felt guilty about that, but she'd learned the hard way that you can't save others if you're falling apart yourself.

"So where was it? When do you think this is going to be? Could he be here already? Is he coming back alone? What was he wearing?"

Liz had managed to convince Maria to hold off on the questions until they got back to her house and had some privacy. Which of course meant that Maria had started spouting a million questions the minute they walked in the door.

"I don't know, Maria," Liz sighed, "It was very impressionistic so I'd say it's further away than usual. Maybe even a couple of weeks. I didn't really get a sense of a place or time. Just sort of the idea of an opening door and then… Michael. I didn't even really see him clearly. Just knew that the blur of colour was him."

Liz dropped Maria's suitcase into the corner of her room and collapsed onto the bed.

"It's not exactly a science," She continued, "I guess I could try searching for more info, but to be honest when they're this indistinct it usually takes time for things to get clearer."

"Okay," Maria was pacing now, "So we'll give it some time. Then we try again. And then again. Eventually we'll be able to pin point exactly where he's going to show up. Hell, maybe we can even figure out how he's going to show up. Maybe there's going to be a mass invasion and the whole world will see them coming. I bet that would be easier for you to see. Then maybe other people would be able to give you different perspectives. You could map the whole arrival from a dozen different points of view so that we know exactly what is going to happen and we will have enough information so that we can know what the right thing to do is."

Liz watched Maria tread back and forth across the room, one hand gesturing wildly as she rambled off on more tangents. Finally she sat back up and snagged Maria's arm as she charged past the bed.

"Maria, stop" Liz pulled Maria down to sit next to her on the bed, "Just stop and breathe and look at me."

They held each other's gaze for a few seconds, each understanding completely that the other was just as terrified and just as uncertain.

Finally Maria let out a long breath and let herself collapse backwards onto the bed. Liz lay down beside her and they both stared at the ceiling.

"Michael," Maria sighed.

"Michael," Liz agreed.

"Well, I guess we'd better call in the cavalry."

The next day they were back at the airport once more, this time waiting for the flight from Albuquerque.

Kyle had agreed to skip a few days of classes to come up straight away. The day that he first started manifesting powers he and Liz had made a promise to each other; that if the one of them needed help for anything related to their alien powers then the other would come running, no questions asked. That deal had been called in a couple of times already, but always only when it was really important. So all Liz had needed to say was "I need you to come" and Kyle was on the next plane.

Unlike Maria, when Kyle walked through the doors he didn't automatically reach out for a hug from Liz. He understood better her trepidation about touching people, the fear that came with the power. His own power wasn't tied so much to the tactile so he always allowed Liz to decide whether to reach out.

Liz smiled and reached out to pull him into an embrace, seeking the comfort of her most undemanding friend. As his arms came around her images and feelings leapt into her head.

 _SurpriseIsabelReliefHowFearTessWhyMaxConfusionAngerMichaelSudden_

Slowly she pulled back from the hug.

She was accustomed to these flashes after so many years. While she avoided them when she could, images still got through fairly regularly. Sometimes she saw whole scenes play out, but more often there were fractured impressions. Sometimes she heard entire conversations, but usually she only got a word or two. Every once in a while she smelled things, though only certain kinds of things. And more often than not there came the gut punch of the emotional response that the events she was glimpsing would inflict on the person she was reading.

That was her least favourite part, but it was also the most reliable. It gave indistinct images and fragmented phrases a foundation to build a premonition on. Sometimes that was the only thing that separated the flashes of someone being raped from someone stubbing their toe.

The flash she'd gotten from Kyle was as indistinct as the one from Maria had been. There was no reference for time or place, no clues for how or why. Only that, if it weren't for Liz's particular gift, it would have been completely unexpected. And one other thing…

"It's all of them," Liz looked at Maria, "They're all coming back."

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 **That's it for chapter 1. I have got a couple of other chapters already written, but I might hold onto them for a bit to see if I can get some sort of momentum going on the rest of the writing.**

 **Let me know what you think!**


	2. Chapter 2

They'd apprised Kyle of the situation on the drive back from the airport. After a freak out much shorter than Maria's had been he'd settled into deal-with-it mode.

"You're definitely one hundred percent sure? You couldn't have been a tiny bit mistaken?" He was sitting on Liz's sofa, clearly putting a great deal of effort into remaining seated and still instead of jumping up to join Maria's pacing.

"How many times are you going to ask that?" Liz sighed, "Yes, Tess as well."

"Okay but," Kyle raised a hand, "What if it was a _different_ Tess? Not the most uncommon name, right?"

"Kyle," Liz rolled her eyes, "It's not like I heard her name or saw her face. I got the impression of her and the emotional response to seeing her. Trust me, there is no other Tess in any solar system that would get that flavour of emotional response from you."

"Right," Kyle dropped his head into his hands with a groan, "Right. Of course, you're right. You're always right. I just don't want it to be true."

"None of us want it to be true." Maria snorted scornfully.

"But why would they even be with Tess?" Kyle gave up on sitting and jumped up to pace perpendicularly to Maria. "Tess betrayed them as much as she betrayed us. If they're with her then does that mean that they won't be coming of their own free will? Will other aliens be coming too? Is it all a trap or an invasion? Or did they forgive her while they were away?"

"I don't know," Liz flopped back in her chair to stare at the ceiling, away from her constantly moving friends. "I've literally told you everything I know so far. It could be any of those. Or something else entirely. For all we know she could still have them thinking she's an ally. Maybe she somehow kept the truth from them the whole time. Who knows what's happened to them while they've been gone."

"So what are we going to do?" Maria finally settled on the arm of Liz's chair. "We can't just sit back and wait to see what happens."

"I think…" Liz frowned, "I think that we can't trust Tess. Which means that we can't trust our own senses or memories when we're around Tess. And I think that, much as we might like to give everybody else great big hugs to welcome them home, we have to prepare for the worst possible situations. Which means, until we have something to go on, we can't trust any of them. Not completely."

"So, basically," Kyle summarised, "We have a couple of weeks to prepare for potentially hostile aliens to show up."

Liz nodded, "But we do have a few things going for us. We're not just helpless humans anymore, and they don't know that."

…

The first weeks had been the hardest.

Maria had gotten obsessed with trying to contact them, getting in touch with the most insane conspiracy theorists in the hopes of finding some clue about where they had gone or when they might come back.

Kyle was having trouble dealing with the recovered memories and no amount of meditation was stopping the nightmares and panic attacks that were triggered by the most benign things.

Liz got angry again.

She'd found Alex's murderer, as she'd promised she would, but in the process they'd lost so much more. And still, there were so many things she didn't know. Things she couldn't find out now.

And through it all, there was the search for four missing teens that was consuming the town. Max and Isabel's parents were devastated. The police were asking all of them questions, and in all of the chaos none of them seemed capable of the quality lies that they'd gotten so accomplished at.

It was only Valenti's interference that kept them from getting in real trouble. That and the fact that there was no evidence of any actual crime.

Liz and Maria spent two days going through all of Tess's things. Maria was hoping to find some way to contact them while Liz was desperate for an answer to the question that plagued her now.

Why?

Why would Tess do this?

Kyle had told them that she might not have killed Alex on purpose, that it seemed like she was trying to mind-warp him and he just died. But that didn't make anything better. Even if she hadn't meant to kill anyone she had stripped people of their own free will just to get what she wanted. Just to translate the book, when anyone could have done that. Tess could have gone to Las Cruces herself, but instead she stayed in Roswell while she forced Alex to do it for her.

The more she thought about it, the more she felt like everything had happened too quickly. It just seemed so convenient that she and Maria had found the translation of the book, which just happened to have instructions on how the aliens could get home, right when Tess fell pregnant with a baby that couldn't survive on Earth.

Liz had come up with a dozen different reasons why Tess might have manipulated things that way, but nothing that really answered why.

Tess had so much here. The Valenti's had given her a home and a family. The whole group had given her friendship and welcome. Why would she want to leave that? Why would she want to drag the others with her?

…

After a few months things had started to get better. Or rather, they started to notice that things had already been getting better.

Liz remembered rock bottom as being three weeks after the departure, when Mrs Evans had come to see her. Max and Isabel's mother had been distraught. She'd cried and yelled and begged for Liz to tell her anything and everything. She'd insisted that she knew there was something Liz and her friends weren't telling them. She'd wept that she knew how much Max loved Liz and that he wouldn't have left without saying goodbye to her as well.

Liz had cried too as she lied to the woman in front of her, wondering if she could just tell the truth. But she hadn't. Instead she'd lied, badly, and kept the secrets of the friends who had abandoned her.

Things hadn't exactly gotten easier after that encounter, but they definitely hadn't gotten worse. And a few weeks after that she realised it wasn't quite as hard to look people in the eye when she lied to them anymore.

After a couple of weeks of intense anxiety and destructive guilt Kyle had started seeing a counsellor who specialised in trauma survivors. He eventually agreed to go along to a support group that mostly catered to survivors of rape and domestic violence. He admitted to Liz that he'd felt stupid and intrusive when he showed up since he hadn't really been attacked in the way these people had, but then he'd heard them speak and had recognised in their words his own feelings and experience. It had helped a lot to hear other people talk about how hard it was to believe that what happened to them wasn't their fault even when they could spell out all the reasons why it had to be true.

Meanwhile, Maria had sped all the way down the crazy obsessive path; hitting dead end after dead end of absurd alien theories, watching the sky for hours in the hopes that something would appear, going out to the desert with sledgehammers and drills trying to get into the pod chamber to find any clues that might have been left behind.

Then one day she just stopped.

She told Liz that she'd spent enough of her life on these aliens. They'd made their own choices, manipulated or not. Michael had chosen to leave her. She was choosing to move on.

Liz watched her do just that with envy. Max had made his own decisions too. He'd chosen to ignore her warnings that Alex had been murdered. He'd slept with Tess and gotten her pregnant. He'd chosen his own path. And yet, Liz couldn't just move on and let it go. Alien drama had been such a huge part of her life for so long, she didn't really know how to live without it.

But she tried. It took time, but she eventually started to feel normal again. She got used to talking about weekend plans and university applications instead of alien powers and government agents. She made new friends and re-engaged with old ones. She taught herself how to be human again and she finally started to believe that she might have a normal, ordinary life to look forward to.

And then she started hallucinating and setting things on fire with a touch.

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 **Totally meant to get this posted before now. I'm incredibly talented at procrastination. Sorry. Thanks for the awesome reviews! I'm so glad that you can see the potential here. Hopefully I can follow through on that.**


	3. Chapter 3

**So I'm a terrible person. Clearly completely useless at updating these things regularly. Or at all. Even when people send warm fuzzy encouraging messages asking me to. The reasons for this delay are 1) not being totally happy with this chapter, 2) being incredibly lazy, and 3) real life.**

 **I'm still not totally happy with this chapter and you might not be either because while there are a whoooooole lot of hints about all sorts of things in here, it doesn't really get into any of the answers yet. And since I'm even less impressed with what I've so far got for the next chapter than I was with this one it's likely to be a while before you get those answers. But, something is better than nothing, right? If you disagree, you should probably quit now.**

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Kyle stared up at the familiar ceiling of his childhood bedroom.

His eyes drifted over dents and stains that marked out his life here, scars in the surface of the room. The slight indent from where Jacob Stein had bet he couldn't jump high enough to touch the ceiling with his head. The splatter of red food colouring that had been there since his sixth grade science fair project erupted somewhat earlier than intended.

And over there, completely undetectable, a stain that no one would ever find trace of. That was where Alex had died.

It had been weeks since they'd learned that aliens would be coming. Days ago they'd passed the record for the furthest ahead that Liz had ever seen.

The waiting was driving him crazy.

It was driving them all a little crazy; he could tell. Everyone was stressed and anxious. And their stress and anxiety compounded on him. Whole paragraphs from his psych textbooks were playing through his head, words like _hypervigilance_ jumping into his mind as he watched his friends fret and plan and fall a tiny bit apart.

People aren't meant to be stressed like this long term.

They all said out loud that this was good, the more time they had to prepare the better. And boy, had they prepared. Some of the things Liz and his dad and the others had come up with had seemed absurdly extreme and dangerously paranoid when he'd first heard them and he'd caught himself rolling his eyes incredulously at some of the suggestions.

Except Alex had died just over there. So the more he thought about it, the more he felt like none of it would be enough.

Kyle took a shuddering breath and fought the urge to push back those fears. Anxiety was allowed. Here, alone in the dark and the quiet, without anyone else's emotions clattering through his mind, his own anxiety was allowed. It was necessary. Because no matter how often they each voiced their gratitude for this extra time, none of them felt it. The strain of anticipation, of not knowing, of having to be prepared for every possibility at every moment, was getting to all of them.

And Kyle got a piece of all of it.

But that was what he did, what he was training himself to do in his classes and with the trauma survivors groups. He could carry the weight of their stresses. That was the role he was there for; he wasn't the tactician or the decision maker. Leave the scheming and back-up plans for back-up plans to his dad, let Maria be the voice of normality and humanity, and Liz… well, Liz would take the leadership, the responsibility, the decision making, and every other thing that just plain needed to be done. From the start they all knew that Liz would be carrying the bulk of this fight. She had the most insight, the best way of knowing the right decisions. But it was also her nature. She had seen it, so she felt responsible for it, and she would see it through no matter what. At the end of the day, she called the shots. Because, sure, they were a team; but if Liz said jump not one of them would even stop to ask how high. She'd earned that trust, that responsibility, the hardest possible way.

Not to mention, she was, hands-down, the best of them at lying. And there was definitely going to be a whole lot of that going on when things finally started happening.

Which should be soon.

It had to be soon.

Liz had gotten clearer pictures as it got closer. She'd told him that he would be here, at his dad's house, when they arrived.

At first, that had freaked him out. His planned trip back to Roswell wasn't until Easter and that was well past the usual timeframe for Liz's predictions.

He had worried about the things that might make him come back to Roswell early. He'd even talked to his lecturers and taken off the week before Easter in the hopes that whatever disaster would call him home would wait or would be less bad if he was already there.

But the week had passed in quiet, unfulfilled anxiety.

The long weekend had finally come around and Liz had gotten to town looking about as excited about the holiday as he'd felt. She'd hugged him and confirmed that nothing had changed since her last vision, then she'd run through some meditation with him, desperately trying to centre herself as much as possible before heading home to face her parents.

Maria had decided last minute to cancel her show and join them for the weekend. She arrived late afternoon the day before, dumping her things unceremoniously at her mother's before joining them for dinner and one more strategy session. At least, they all hoped it would be the last one.

A sudden knock at the door made him jolt upright.

He jumped out of bed and dragged on a t-shirt from the back of his chair.

There were lots of reasons for someone to knock on the door this late at night. Lots of totally human reasons. Maybe a neighbour was having a heart attack. Maybe the sheriff's station needed his dad to come in and for some reason every phone wasn't working. Maybe someone had a flat tire.

Maybe there were aliens on his front porch.

Kyle saw his dad stumble out of his room as the knocking continued. They shared a glance as Kyle paused in front of the door.

After taking a moment to steady his breathing and centre his thoughts Kyle reached out and opened the door.

He stared at the group on the other side for a minute, unable to think of any words despite how long he'd had to prepare.

"Kyle!" Tess grinned and threw herself into his arms.

Kyle blinked in shock and tried to supress the urge to throw her straight back out the door.

"What?" He managed to ask.

"Yeah," Max stepped forward, "We're back."

…

Liz was jerked awake by the sound of her phone vibrating on her bedside table. She fumbled blearily for it and stabbed at the answer button haphazardly.

"Hello?" she managed to grunt.

"You need to get here now." Kyle's voice came loudly through the speaker, "You'll never believe who just showed up at our door."

"Okay," Liz whispered through the sudden increase in her heart rate. She had a plan for this. They had rehearsed. "I'll be ten minutes."

Liz rolled out of bed and grabbed the first clothes she found.

As she was pulling on her shoes she dialled Maria.

"What?" Maria answered blearily after several rings.

"It's time," Liz told her, "Are you coming with me?"

There was a short pause before Maria replied.

"I can't. I'm sorry, Liz, I can't face them tonight."

"That's okay, Maria," Liz replied, "I know how hard this is for you."

"It's not like it's easy for anyone else, though," Maria sighed, "But if I go with you I will end up slapping someone which might throw off the plan."

"I get it Maria. I'll let you know what happens."

Liz ducked out of her room and tiptoed down the hallway to the stairs. On the landing she grabbed her dad's keys and snuck out to his car without a backward glance. He would be angry with her for taking it without asking, but she was used to their disappointment by now.

On the short drive to the Valenti house she practiced some of the meditation techniques that Kyle had taught her to try and even out her breathing and get control of her power. She needed to be ready when she got there because any warning they could get about what was coming could save lives.

When she pulled up in front of the house she spared herself 10 seconds more to prepare for what she had to do, and then she jumped out of the car and dashed to the house. She didn't even pause at the door but simply walked straight inside.

Even though she'd seen them in so many flashes over the past weeks it still sent a shocking jolt through her to see them there. They looked so different and yet so much the same. She froze for a moment taking them in.

Max and Isabel were sitting on the couch next to Valenti while Tess perched on the arm closest to the door. Michael was leaning against the wall, watching Kyle pace in front of him.

Their clothes were strange. Michael and Isabel were wearing some weird uniform looking outfits that gave them a very odd silhouette and the satiny fabrics Max and Tess were decked out in looked like pyjamas. They all looked exhausted.

Liz reached out in a daze towards Michael, who was closest to her. She let her fingers brush his arm and reached out with her power for some glimpse of his future.

 _"You slept with me and then you just left! Did you expect me to be happy?"_ Maria's voice echoed in her ears.

Liz turned and took a step towards the others on the couch.

"You're really here." She murmured as she moved closer. Bracing herself, she reached out to drag Tess into a hug.

 _Tess was kneeling on the ground, sobbing. Tears streamed down her face as she literally shook with grief. She raised her head and screamed in anger and fear and despair._

Liz felt tears in her own eyes as she stepped back. Her hands were starting to shake as she reached for Isabel, who had risen from the couch when Liz approached. She gripped the other girl's arm.

 _She was angry, furious. She wanted to scream and cry and smash things. She started throwing words out, yelling about choices and amends, hating that he didn't understand._

Liz dragged in a shuddering breath and finally turned her eyes to Max, still sitting on the couch in front of her.

Meeting his eyes, all of the feelings she'd had for him came flooding back, and all of the pain. She stumbled back as tears spilled from her eyes.

"I'm sorry," She gasped turning away, "I just need a minute."

...

Max stood as Liz rushed from the room without looking at anyone else. He'd seen the turmoil in her eyes when she'd looked at him. He moved to follow her, wanting to talk to her, wanting to explain that she was the thing that had kept him going over the last years. He knew that he'd hurt her before they left, but he needed to tell her that through everything he'd suffered the thought of her had always given him hope.

Kyle stepped in front of him with a hand out.

"No," Kyle stopped him, "I'll talk to her. She needs a minute to process before she has to face you."

Max hesitated and then nodded grimly. It hurt to see her walk away from him, hurt to see for himself how much things had changed while they'd been gone. He'd known that they couldn't expect to just walk back into the lives that they'd left behind, but a part of him had hoped that their friends would at least welcome them back. Instead they watched them like they were strangers.

It was hard talking to Michael and Isabel, too. Their experiences over the last few years were so different from what he and Tess had been put through. Even though he knew it wasn't rational, a part of him blamed them for his capture and for not rescuing them sooner.

Even with Tess, the only one he'd had any real interaction with over the last years, he couldn't really summon the words to talk about what they'd been through. They had seen too many things, together and separately, to be able to go back to being friends or lovers. But at least they had an understanding. He knew the worst things that Kivar had put Tess through as she knew the worst he'd been subjected to. But they had been used against each other too much to be able to reach out for support now. There was just too much pain and loss between them.

Since the day that they landed on Antar Max had dreamt of the family he'd left behind on earth. He hadn't just left his parents, who had supported him through everything, but he'd also lost friends like Maria and Valenti who had always offered a sympathetic ear and advice. And he'd lost Liz, the person who had understood him better than he'd understood himself.

When he'd finally accepted that he was really coming home he'd fantasised about what their return would be like. None of his imagined encounters included Liz running away crying at a single glance from him.

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 **Despite my apparent lack of reaction, I do love to get comments. And they make me feel bad about not posting which (sometimes) guilts me into working on this. So send me your thoughts and maybe the next update won't take quite so long! No promises.**


	4. Chapter 4

Kyle followed Liz towards the back of the house where she'd taken refuge in his room. He closed the door behind him to give them privacy.

Liz was shaking with tears, dragging in shuddering breaths between sobs. Kyle waited quietly by the door while she fell apart across from him. He knew that she was aware of his presence and that she would reach out if she wanted physical comfort and would speak up if she wanted to talk it out.

After a few minutes her breathing had steadied and her tears had slowed. Kyle reached out to offer her the tissue box that lived on his desk. She took several tissues to mop at her face and blow her nose. When she had pulled herself together she sat on his bed and looked up at him with a wry smile.

"I really thought I was ready for this." She admitted.

"Yeah," Kyle settled beside her, leaving a careful gap between them to ensure he didn't accidentally touch her, "I thought I wanted it to happen, that the anticipation had to be worse than actually facing them all again. Boy was I wrong."

"I can imagine," Liz said, "If what they're going to be feeling in the future is anything like what they're feeling now then it must feel like a barrage of emotions to you."

"Pretty much," Kyle sighed, "I couldn't handle all of them. I know we had planned on getting a read on each of them to decide whether we could trust them but it was too much. Even focussing on Tess was hard. Kept having to close my eyes, block out the conversation, and do breathing exercises."

"Well," Liz offered, "You didn't burst into tears and run away, so you're still doing better than me."

"Yeah, but I'm also shutting out as much as I can. I know you were actually pushing to see anything from them, so you have nothing but my respect."

"That wasn't even the worst of it," Liz admitted, "It wasn't easy, but I was ready for their futures. It was my own past that was the problem. I thought I'd dealt with my feelings about everything a while ago, but actually seeing Max again, especially with Tess right there, it brought everything back."

"Yeah, I'm actually kind of glad that their emotions were so overwhelming that I was distracted from my own. Really not looking forward to having to deal with that."

Liz nodded sadly, then with a deep breath straightened her shoulders and put her business face back on.

"Did you get anything useful from them? All I got was that their futures are emotional and full of yelling from various sources." Liz wrinkled her nose at the memory of it all.

"Not much." Kyle sighed, "They're all full of mixed feelings, the kind that's hard to sort out. But Max and Tess both had a familiar sort of mix that I see a lot in the trauma survivors group that I volunteer with. Whatever they went through wasn't pleasant for either of them. Michael and Isabel weren't the same, but there were too many feels going on for me to figure out what was different."

Liz snorted, "Yeah, I saw Tess mourning. Like seriously devastated. She was crying and screaming in grief. I'm not surprised to hear that the last years haven't been great for her. I wish I could say I'm sorry for that, but I guess I'm not a good enough person to have sympathy for her after what she did."

"I'm not sure," Kyle hesitated, "I dropped Alex's name into the conversation and Tess felt guilty. I'm not saying that she deserves our trust or forgiveness, but if she feels guilt then there is at least a chance for her. I don't know if I'm a good enough person to give her that chance either, but I know that people don't reform if you don't give them the opportunity."

Liz sighed, pondering his words. She knew rationally that getting Tess onto their side was the safest way to resolve the situation, but she had no desire offer forgiveness. Besides, she just didn't think she could ever trust the girl again. How could you trust someone who could mess with your mind and memories?

"I know you might be right," Liz replied firmly, "But I'm not willing to risk that on one moment of guilt. We stick with the plan until we have something more to go on."

"Agreed," Kyle nodded slowly, "Which means we should really get back out there. Are you ready for more?"

"Yeah," Liz stood, gesturing for Kyle to lead the way.

...

Isabel looked up as Kyle and Liz returned.

After the pair's dramatic exit, the remaining group had sat in awkward silence. Isabel had tried to find something to say, but everything she could think of seemed either too frivolous for this moment or too important to talk about while Liz and Kyle weren't there.

She was used to that feeling. The majority of the weeks travelling here had been spent in a similar state. She and Michael had grown apart over the years, though they always remained allies. They were united in their purpose, but not in their beliefs. He hated everything he found on Antar, while Isabel had found a place where she was more than just a pretty face with a dark secret. Somewhere that she could be honest and intelligent and actually felt like she could make a difference.

She and Michael had mastered both the meaningless conversation and the direct confrontation during their time away from Earth and neither of them knew anymore how to get back to the way things used to be.

On the trip back to Earth, she'd chosen instead to spend most of her time with Max. They had sat together, crying and reminiscing, speculating about what they might find when they arrived. But the few times she'd tried to talk about what had happened in the intervening years he shut her down quickly. He didn't want to think about what had happened and he didn't believe there was anything worth remembering about their home planet.

Tess was the only one who had any kind of regret about leaving Antar behind, but the more Isabel talked to her the more she realised that Tess wasn't the same person she'd known before. There was something in Tess's eyes that sent a chill down her spine when Isabel mentioned the things left behind on Antar. Isabel had found herself avoiding Tess, and then wondering why she'd done so.

"Sorry about that," Liz spoke up when she stood in the centre of the room again. "This is just a little overwhelming."

"Of course," Isabel gave her a sympathetic look, "This is strange for all of us."

"What… Um…" Liz hesitated and then settled onto the floor across from all of them, her back to the wall, before she continued. "What happened to you?"

Isabel exchanged a look with Michael and Tess, but Max carefully avoided everyone's gaze, staring instead at his own lap.

"It's a long story," Isabel warned.

"Give us the highlights then," Kyle suggested.

Isabel glanced at the others again but none of them seemed inclined to do the talking. She looked back at the humans arrayed around them and took a steadying breath.

"They were waiting for us when we landed," She kept her voice calm and factual, "It's not surprising really. They're always scanning for certain kinds of energy, so they saw the Granolith coming the instant we showed up in their solar system. When we opened the doors there were dozens of soldiers waiting for us. The resistance movement had heard about it and they showed up too. They started a pretty big fight over us, and in the chaos we got separated."

"We were together for less than an hour after leaving Earth before we lost each other." Michael snorted at their own naiveté. He frequently laughed about how stupid they'd been to leave the safety of Earth so blindly.

"Michael and I both got smuggled away from the fight by different groups of loyalists to the old monarchy." Isabel continued. "It was months before we saw we saw each other again. But Max and Tess were captured by Kivar's forces and…" Isabel hesitated, unsure how much of their story to tell.

Michael saved her from having to decide.

"It took us years to convince the resistance movement to break into Kivar's stronghold to save them." Michael said. "And then it took more years to get people into the places we needed them inside Kivar's palace."

"We broke in and got Max and Tess out a couple of months ago." Isabel continued the story. "We knew there was nowhere in that solar system where we would be safe after that, so we stole the fastest spaceship in Kivar's fleet and came here."

"The second fastest," Michael corrected irritably.

Isabel sighed and spoke in a voice that was clearly sick of having this conversation, "You know the Granolith would have been the worst possible getaway vehicle. And we sabotaged it permanently. They can't use it against us or build another one without the key."

Kyle frowned in confusion at this, "I thought the Granolith could only be used once."

"No," Isabel responded, "I think that was a mistranslation. Translation isn't exactly straightforward even for people who are fluent in two languages, let alone for a computer looking for patterns of repetition. The Granolith was set up to make one trip from Earth back to Antar as soon as the key was inserted. I think the message in the book was probably that once the Granolith left Earth it probably wouldn't be coming back."

"So let me get this straight," Liz spoke up fiercely, "You liberated Kivar's most prized prisoners, broke one of his most powerful weapons and ran away to the first place he's going to send spaceships to look for you?"

Silence followed her question.

"So how long do we have before an army of aliens shows up here?" Liz asked angrily.

"We took precautions." Isabel defended, "We sabotaged all of the long range spaceships that were in that building, which was most of them. It will take months to repair them or to build new ones. And the ship we took is the prototype, so there aren't any others that travel that fast anyway. It should be months before Kivar can muster the resources to get here."

"And did you have a plan for what to do when that happens?" Valenti asked calmly.

Once again, the aliens found themselves speechless.

"We didn't have a choice!" Isabel insisted. "This was the only way to get Max and Tess out of his grip."

"Did you just decide that their lives are worth more than every human being on this planet?" Liz asked wearily.

"We decided it was worth the chance!" Isabel burst out, "We have hope here. We have allies and time to come up with a plan. There is no hope left on Antar for anyone. If we want a chance at winning then we needed a place to fall back and regroup."

"What allies do you have here?" Liz asked, "A deputy sheriff in a mostly rural county? A biology grad student? A volunteer peer counsellor? What were you expecting to find when you landed here?"

"We expected to find friends." Max spoke for the first time. "We wanted to come home."

Liz sighed and dropped her head into her hands.

Isabel wiped at the tears that had gathered at the corners of her eyes. There were so many reasons why they had chosen to come back here, and they'd all made so much sense at the time. But faced with Liz's accusations Isabel found it hard to explain why it was a good idea, why it was worth risking this entire planet.

"Well, the damage is done." Liz raised her head again, "You're here now and whoever follows you will come. You say we have time before then, so I guess we'll just have to add it to the long list of problems we have to deal with."

Valenti nodded in agreement.

"How about we start with some of the simpler problems then," He suggested, "You said you came in a spaceship. Do we need to do something to hide it or move it?"

Isabel shook her head, "No, it has a built in camouflage. We left it out in the desert, but no one should be able to find it."

"Okay," Valenti said encouragingly, "That's good. One problem solved already. Then there's the fact that you're all officially dead, and there are enough people in this town that might recognise you that staying here could raise some awfully awkward questions. Not to mention your rather eye-catching outfits."

"I'd kill for a shower." Tess spoke up quietly from her place on the sofa. Liz noticed the way Kyle flinched at her choice of words.

"There we go," Valenti gave her a nod, "Problems we can fix. The boys can borrow some clothes from here, but we don't have much in the way of women's clothes."

"I can grab something from home," Liz offered. "I don't know what's still there; the only things left at Mom and Dad's are things I haven't worn since high school. There should be something you guys can use though."

"You're not still at the Crashdown?" Max asked, suddenly acutely aware of the chasm between the Liz he knew and the one sitting in front of him.

Liz shook her head, "Just back for the holiday. It's Easter," She clarified, "If you didn't know. I've been in Chicago for about 5 years."

Liz pushed herself to her feet and turned aside before they could ask more questions. She knew that she would have to talk to them about everything eventually, but she wasn't up for an interrogation tonight.

"I should go see what clothes I can find." She mumbled as she turned aside.

"I could come with you," Isabel offered. "It might be harder to find something of yours that will fit me and it's going to be a long wait for a shower here anyway."

Liz hesitated, shooting a glance at Kyle, before nodding, "Sure, Isabel."

Liz spared one glance back at the others as she led the way through the door. The silence around them was heavy with all of the things that weren't being said by each of them. None of them seemed very keen to open up any time soon.

Liz turned back and walked out to the car ahead of Isabel. She'd have to start digging into those uncomfortable silences soon. She needed to have as much information as possible to be able to prepare for what might come next. But she hoped that Isabel was right about them having some time to regroup before it all fell apart.

Well, before it fell apart _more_.

* * *

 **Look, another chapter for you. Surprise, I haven't quite given up on this story yet!**

 **Why do I always start working on these things so late? I should be sleeping right now. Instead I'm staring at the same sentences over and over trying to figure out if they make sense out side of my own sleepy brain.**


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